4 COMMUNICATION AND READING

are so deficient when measured against standards of scientific
procedures that their findings are worthless or at best suspect.
Seldom are two studies so designed and conducted that they
provide checks upon one another. Public libraries vary greatly
by locality and size, and research findings vary accordingly.
As a result of such conditions in the research literature on
public librarianship, generalization is hazardous.

But in this report generalizations have been drawn. In this
attempt to provide an over-all picture of library service in
this country today, the nature and the quality of the data
were taken into account at every point of interpretation. At-
tention is occasionally drawn to gaps in our own body of
information, to qualifications necessary for the interpreta-
tion of various data, and to relatively sound knowledge in
some areas of library use. The special survey sponsored by the
Public Library Inquiry and conducted by the Survey Re-
search Center of the University of Michigan has been partic-
ularly helpful at several points.

By means of this brief-introduction (and the fuller state-
ment in the “Note on Method”), the reader is cautioned to
keep in mind throughout the report the author’s problem of
constructing a unified and general pattern of library use from
a set of individualized and disparate research studies made
at various times in various places on various topics for various
purposes.

The American public library is a social invention designed
for the preservation and dissemination of certain cultural
products of the nation and the community. In an age of wide-
spread literacy, increased leisure time, and democratic re-
sponsibilities, the public library was conceived and developed
to provide ready and free access to books for all the members
of the community. The American society, extolling social
progress and individual improvement, set up the public li-